Breaktime’s Over

Y’all must  remember Margalit from back in the Chick outing days, I’m sure. Remember the dramatics when she announced she’d be taking a blogging break for a while? All the hate blogger’s out there were wearing her down. She needed a break from the pressure.

Guess what? She’s coming on back! But she doesn’t want you to read her new blog. If you’ve looked at one of the handful of blogs that have written about her, you’re not welcome. If you follow someone she doesn’t like on Twitter, she doesn’t want you. Who the hell’s left, Margalit??

It’s such a scam. She doesn’t want you to read, but she announces she’s starting a new blog. She’s going to be private so the haters can’t hate on her. You have to e-mail a request, and wait for her to investigate and clear you for reading!  If you pass her stringent requirements, you’re a member of the inner circle. Her near and dear, trusted readers. I wonder does she mean me, too? I think she secretly likes me. I noticed she didn’t clear me off her Twitter followers, even though she claims to have ruthlessly deleted all the  contacts she didn’t trust. Things that make you go hmm…

On the flip side, though, she’s already said she’s going to eventually take the new blog public. Which kinda negates the need for her investigative vetting process, I’d say. Public blog, Joe Blow can read all he wants. As can I, and Lilith and Chick and Avitable. And anyone else who’s ever written about Margalit. 

Methinks it’s just a big ole ploy to garner her a few new readers. Everyone loves a good story with a big, evil nemesis.  What do you think?

Twitterati

I wasted a couple of hours yesterday scrolling through Twitter, desperately hoping to finally understand the great appeal. Twitter’s like a constantly updated Facebook.  In 140 characters. I don’t know if I can express a complete thought in 140 characters. Not one that’s worth knowing, anyway.  Do we really need to be informed of every random thought that comes to mind? Do we really need to know what you thought of the movie, while you’re still at the bloody movie? I sure as hell don’t. People are tweeting the stupidest shit possible. It’s like there’s an unspoken contest to see who tweets the most banal thought of the day.

I’ve realized Twitter is seriously impacting how seriously I take people. I’ve lost a little respect for some.  A couple of blogger’s I used to really quite like, I’m not as interested in since reading their tweets. Twitter makes some people look like absolute twits, no pun intended.  Some just leave me cold with the constant self-promotion. Others are simply annoying with the sheer volume of tweets. Seriously, who the hell needs to tweet dozens of times a day? I sure as hell don’t feel the need to go on over to your blog – I just read every thought you’ve ever had on Twitter!

This bizarre influx of celebrity tweeters is crazy-ass weird, too.  Barbara Walters tweeting about losing her Twitter virginity? Seriously? I always liked her, but I can’t reconcile the Barbara Walters who interviewed heads of state with a Barbara Walters who tweets about being shampooed. Larry King tweeting about Krispy Kreme’s is equally surreal. Stars are on talk shows and in interviews everywhere, talking up Twitter at every opportunity. Oprah joined Twitter and it was news. And guess what? Her tweets are as dumb as mine.

Yeah, I’m on Twitter, but I really don’t think I’m a tweeting Twitterer at heart. I’ve tweeted a couple of times, and I’ll tweet again, but at 140 characters a tweet, what can be said that’s worth saying?

Fame….

A few months ago, a friend and I were talking about blogs, and exchanging links. She gave me one for  Julia Allison. I’d never heard of her before and said so. This is kinda how that conversation went:

Me:    Who’s this Julia chick?

Her:   Oh, my God! Are you even serious? How can you not know Julia Allison?

Me:    I don’t know. Why should I know her?

Her:   Seriously, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear you lived under a rock!!

Me:    I guess she doesn’t hang under rocks, then.

Her:   No, she doesn’t. She just hangs in cool places, with cool people, doing cool things. If you were half as cool as you think you are, you’d know this.

Right after that conversation decimated any notions of my coolness, I looked up Ms. Allison and read all about her cool. And was totally unimpressed. She is totally famous for simply being famous. And that’s it. Wired Magazine actually made her their cover girl, promoting her and her secrets of self-promotion,  because of her fame-for-nothing status. Seriously.

So, she’s famous. A fame-ho. Her Non-Society site is the latest in a string of different blogs and websites. She’s quite a following of devoted fans, but a seemingly larger number of haters. Someone has even resurrected the old Trainwrecks name, and has dedicated Trainwrecks2.0 to hating Julia. Tumblr made a bit of a fool out of themselves last month when they banned, and then re-instated Tumblr accounts which reblogged about  Allison. I can’t decide if she really has enough honest to goodness fans to be as popular as she is, or if it’s the haters that are driving her stock upward.

I don’t get it, I really don’t. And that probably shows you all how totally uncool and decidedly un-hip I am. But I don’t freakin’ get it. She doesn’t really write, but she updates voraciously. She’s appeared as a talking head for something like 400 TV appearances, but Bravo is apparently not picking up the option they had for her Non-Society reality show.  She has a dating column, but it appears her love life is always in the crapper. She doesn’t blog, or vlog, or anything like it. No. She lifecasts. No shit. And she’s a bonafide internet star. For now. Until someone younger, hotter, cooler and hipper comes along.

Famous for being famous. A reflection on today’s society, and our obsession with quasi-celebs like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian? Or a sign of things to come, with more clebrities being spawned online? Are today’s blogger’s (or lifecasters!) going to climb the fame wagon like yesterday’s reality TV stars?

When “Keeping it Real” doesn’t extend to real life…

When I first decided to start up this blog, Ree Drummond and her Pioneer Woman  cowpoopy goodness weren’t so much on my radar. I’d read the site before, and have even tried a couple of her recipes, but she’s not the kind of blogger I read often. Way too much down home goodness for my liking. I generally prefer a bit of substance to whatever I’m reading, and cows and horses just don’t cut it for me.

Ms. Drummond and her Pioneer Woman persona have quite a following, however, and many readers seem to have an insatiable appetite for all things Drummond. I think I’ve mentioned her twice on this blog, but yet, I receive dozens of hits every week for The Pioneer Woman,  for Ree or her husband, Ladd Drummond.  I still have no idea what the hell people are searching for, but search they do. As I looked over my stats page yesterday, a new PW related search caught my eye, and I had to go to her site and check it out for myself.

It would seem that Ms. Drummond’s server had been hacked early this month, and a form of malware installed to her server subsequently infected an unknown number of her readers computers. Shitty luck, huh? Glad I wasn’t one of those readers, many have posted about the problems they’ve encountered trying to clean their systems, and have been open about the fact this has cost moulah, baby. Mucho moulah.

Ree’s response to this crisis? Nearly zip. Nearly zilch. Nearly freakin’ inexcusably ignorant. Ms. Pioneer Woman herself has nearly ignored the fact that her server has caused some MAJOR inconveniences to her readers, not to mention cold, hard cash. Her explanations about what went wrong on her server are laughable in their vagueness. Aliens? Planet Hackatron? Really, Ree? Is this really the best explanation?

There’s not one real mention of what actually happened on her site. She doesn’t say, in plain fucking English, what happened, other than her Aliens from Planet Hackatron bullshit. She calls the infection a “bug”. She calls her server being hacked a “server meltdown”. She says a “handful” of visitors may have been affected. She says she doesn’t want to go into “the gory details”.

Seriously? Is this really the best she can do? She’s running what’s arguably one of the top earning blogs, with huge traffic. And clearly, she doesn’t have enough respect for her readers to be honest and truthful about something that, initially, was not her fault. And it wasn’t. She can’t help being hacked, I don’t suppose. But she can help being too full of herself to explain, in plain English, on the front page of her blog, what the hell happened, what the infection really was, and what her readers should check for. She doesn’t even have the decency to name the files you should check for. Understandably, she doesn’t want to associate her website with any unpleasantness. But when it spills over and affects her readers, you’d think she’d stand up, take it on the chin and be honest with her readers.  

Not being honest, in my opinion, is worse for her reputation than avoiding the issue. Because she’s avoiding the issues, people are talking elsewhere. I looked in on Poop on Peeps earlier, and Chick’s readers are talking about it, too. Including some batshit crazy commentor who thinks Ree has deliberately infected her readers to gather marketing info. Is that the image she wants? I’d hardly think so. Avoiding the issue never makes it go away.

How’s that for keeping it real?